Report: Drunk Drivers Hit the Road With Nukes in Tow

Posted on Nov 22, 2010

As if driving drunk wasn’t deadly enough. On Monday the Office of Secure Transportation released a report spanning 2007 to 2009 that disclosed some seriously unsettling findings about drivers hired to tote nuclear weapons and materials around the country and, in a few cases, electing to do so while inebriated. “Alcohol incidents such as these, as infrequent as they may be, indicate a potential vulnerability in OST’s critical national security mission,” the agency warned in an alarming (under)statement. —KA

AP via Google News:

Government agents hired to drive nuclear weapons and components in trucks sometimes got drunk on the job, including an incident last year when two agents were detained by police at a local bar during a convoy mission, according to a report Monday by the U.S. Energy Department’s watchdog.

... The report said that two incidents in particular raised red flags because they happened during “secure transportation missions” while agents checked into local hotels during extended missions, and the vehicles were placed in “safe harbor.”

One more reason to doubt the ability of our systems to provide safe handling of radioactive material, but in their defense we have no safe way to contain this poison, so might as well allow it to get dumped in a gutter along the way. Nuclear is not clean energy. What we need is better use of the energy we have and a different way to look at life. Why do cities need to be lit up like day at night? Just for starters. Oh, and also, why have servo motors doing tasks that are so easy even most people in bad health can do the work themselves? Just asking?